


To Have and To Hold

by Imagining_in_the_Margins



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Divorce, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt Spencer Reid, Hurt/Comfort, Making Love, Making Up, Marriage, Married Couple, Sad Spencer Reid, Separations, Sex, Smut, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:34:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26822983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagining_in_the_Margins/pseuds/Imagining_in_the_Margins
Summary: Reader is trying to save her marriage, but Spencer seems resigned to its failure.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Reader, Spencer Reid/You
Comments: 2
Kudos: 113





	To Have and To Hold

The sound of mine and Spencer’s marital home was the sound of deafening silence. Even the clock on the wall didn’t dare tick and break the tension that had seeped into the structure, permeating through the home to make it seem like not much of a home at all.

It hadn't always been like that. Once upon a time, it was filled with laughter, both our own and that of our first and only son. I still got to hear it, but Spencer didn’t. Spencer didn’t hear much, seeing as he was absent more often than not.

I stared at the place on the kitchen counter where a vase used to sit, and my stomach twisted into knots that felt permanent.

It wasn’t always quiet, but lately that almost seemed like the more merciful way to be.

_“It’s like this every time!” I screamed loud enough to hurt my throat, the basket in my hand clattering onto the floor and spilling its contents across the floor._

_I felt like that, too. Fragmented and scattered and helplessly lying at the bottom of something I wasn’t equipped to climb out of._

_“I don’t know what you want from me.” Spencer, on the other hand, was quiet and composed in his anger. He always was. I wondered if he secretly held it against me that I couldn’t be more like him. That I couldn’t compartmentalize my feelings and speak logically in the face of the completely illogical._

_“What is that even supposed to mean?”_

_“I can’t be the person you want me to be,” he answered just as vaguely, watching as my hands balled into fists and shook under the weight of it all._

_“What, which part?” I said with a bitter laugh, gesturing to the cold, empty house around us. “Do you mean you can’t be a father who’s actually there?”_

_“That’s not fair.” He tried to cut me off, but his voice was too small and too broken to be heard over the chaos of my rage. That, too, was pooling in my mouth and falling through the room too fast, too strong._

_“Or do you mean a husband that actually likes his wife?” I spat. My heaving chest was the first time I realized that I hadn’t taken a breath. The anger was literally suffocating me, and I didn’t know how to expel it from my lungs without hurting everyone around me._

_I couldn’t breathe. I needed to breathe._

_“Stop. Just stop,” Spencer urged, his voice hard and loud now, albeit stable. “This isn’t solving anything.”_

_Taking a few steps forward to stand before him, I met his eyes for the few seconds he let me. I laughed as they fell to the ground, but it was the kind of laugh that’s best reserved for things that are irreparably lost. The kind of laugh you have to stop yourself from crying._

_“Tell me that I’m wrong then. Tell me that you don’t resent me, Spencer.” The words were mixed with a whine. The answer had made its way out but was replaced with the heavy lead of sadness._

_He didn’t answer me._

_“Tell me that you still want to be with me.”_

_“I don’t want to fight with you,” he said softly before turning away._

_I wanted to follow him, to grab him and beg him to look at me. I wanted to tell him that I needed him to answer me because whatever my brain came up with would hurt twice as much. I wanted to tell him that I still loved him, and desperately needed to hear him tell me the same._

_But I didn’t tell him any of that. No, instead I just sat there with crackling voice and a quivering lip, letting the anger replace the sadness again. “Where are you going?” I shouted, hoping that hearing my own voice would convince me that this wasn’t really happening._

_Picking up his bag and keys, Spencer finally looked at me, and the apathy I was met with felt like the abruptness of an ending at intermission._

_“I’m sorry,” he said, but I couldn’t believe him. “I promise it’s not forever I just... I have to leave.”_

_“Fine.” I replied, crossing my arms to stop myself from throwing them around him and asking him not to leave them empty again that night._

_My husband looked at me, not with a breaking heart, but rather, one that was already broken. He looked down at the disaster at my feet and then up at the disaster that was his wife. I don’t know what he saw, or what he would have said when his mouth opened, but I never let it happen._

_I was too scared. I was so, so scared that whatever followed would hurt me more than I could ever hurt him. So in pre-emptive self-defense, I said the only thing I'd promised myself I would never let him hear._

_“It’s all your father ever taught you to do, anyway. You might as well teach your son, too.”_

_The only response I got was a tear on his cheek and the click of the lock after he left. And then, I was alone, with only the silence left to keep me company. In a pathetic desperation to break the suffocating silence, I violently threw my hands against the counter and its contents resting so peacefully there._

_I destroyed everything that sat there, mocking me and reminding me of all the mistakes that had led me there. The memories were tainted now, so why should anything else remain intact?_

_But when I stared at the remnants of the vase holding a dried bouquet, I realized that no matter what I destroyed, I would still feel like the most broken thing in the room._

I almost missed the sound of destruction in my kitchen. I almost missed the screaming because at least then I knew that we still cared enough to be angry. No matter how much I really, really didn’t want to be angry.

Staring at the screen of my phone for a few too many minutes, I sighed when I finally sent the message that had been staring back at me for hours.

“ _Are you coming home tonight?_ ”

His answer was almost immediate, which should have given me the answer in itself.

“ _Should I?_ ”

“ _If you want to. Your son misses you._ ” I responded after a minute, turning to look at the staircase still littered with his toys. A toddler who was starting to be old enough to remember the fights was certainly old enough to notice his father’s absence.

“ _I don’t want him to see us fighting._ ”

And apparently, Spencer was only worried about one of those things. But that wasn’t what really made my blood boil, causing my fingers to sprint into quick, loud tapping. “ _Why do you assume I’m going to fight with you, Spencer?_ ”

“ _We’re fighting right now._ ” He responded without a second of hesitation, almost like he’d had the message waiting.

I typed my reply so many times, unable to show him the hurt and sadness that I felt inside. The texts on the LCD screen would have never been enough. “ _That’s not my fault._ ” I said, praying that he would understand the meaning behind the words.

Unfortunately, it seemed that neither of us were prepared to face what was clawing at the surface of our throats. Stubbornly dedicated to the misunderstandings above all else, Spencer answered with what he knew would hurt me the most. The same as I had.

“ _It never is, is it?_ ”

It was my turn not to reply. Tossing my phone onto the counter, I forced myself to ignore it for the rest of the night. The real world could wait while I drowned myself in the bottle of wine I’d been trying to convince myself not to drink. Might as well drink it all, I figured, since Spencer wasn’t going to share it with me, anyway.

Lounging on the couch, I made a point of sitting in his seat, hoping that I would one day be able to claim it as my own. The only problem was that it gave me the perfect view of the clock— the very same thing I’d spend hours watching, waiting for him to come home.

_He’s not coming. I don’t need him, anyway. He’s not coming. I don’t need him, anyway._

I repeated the words to myself so that one day I might believe them. I kept pouring the wine hoping that eventually I might be able to cry the tears that I’d been drowning in since the last time we shared our bed.

But I felt nothing. Even when the locks started to click open, my eyes stayed fixed on the clock that read 11:33PM. And even when he turned to see me next to a nearly empty bottle, I didn’t avert my eyes.

“He’s pretending like he’s asleep but he’s not,” I said between sips, “You should go see him. I think he’s waiting up for you.”

From my peripherals I saw him watching me, opening and closing his mouth with words better left unsaid. They would stay that way, too. All he said, instead, was one quiet, broken, “Thanks.”

Why did the sound of his footsteps on the staircase feel so overwhelming? Why was it so fucking loud, to feel his presence in our home? The same feet in the same places where he'd struggled to half carry me up the stairs when we returned from our wedding, laughing and drunk on the love that we promised to never let die.

I felt sick, but I blamed it on the wine that I never stopped drinking. By the time Spencer returned, though, both the glass and bottle were as empty as I still felt. His eyes followed me when I walked them to the sink, setting them down to be a problem for a future self.

The present, despairing version of me had had enough of them.

“Are you leaving?” I asked to the sink, too scared to face him when the thinly veiled plea let my lips. As we often did, Spencer took his turn of silence. I heard him putting on his coat, the jingling of his keys the only other indicator that he was still there.

My fingers tightened around the lip of the counter, knuckles whitening with each second of silence from him that passed. “Please, Spencer, just answer me when I ask you something.” The words were sharper than I wanted them to be, and I blamed the wine. I also blamed the wine for the way I could barely stand without the support of the counter I limped alongside.

“You already know the answer. Why would I want to open a dialogue about it?” Beneath his monotone, I heard a shred of empathy and concern that I would willfully misinterpret as disgust and shame.

“Because that’s what you do when you respect someone,” I challenged, looking up at him with flat lips and a pulse that seemed too fast in a world moving in slow motion.

“I’m sorry,” he conceded the disrespect but didn’t counter it with anything but a predictable but unavoidably painful answer. “Yes, I’m leaving.”

My hand slid over the stack of papers at the end of the counter, and I swore I almost saw him flinch when he thought that I might fall. But I didn’t. After all, I knew the dips and bumps in these floorboards by heart. He couldn’t say the same, even with his memory.

“Take this with you, then,” I muttered, shoving the papers at him until he reluctantly accepted them. It only took him a glance to recognize the forms.

“Okay,” he said.

“That’s it?” I laughed because there was nothing else to do. “Just ‘ _okay?_ ’”

Although he looked down at the Washington, DC court forms again, he sighed and shook his head. He didn’t look at me when he explained, “I don’t want to fight with you. He’s still awake.”

And that was just it. He looked down at my cry for help, the papers to formally designate our love as dead, and all he had to say was that it wasn’t worth the fight. He looked at the papers I gave him, knowing that they were me begging him to do something while we still could, and his answer was resignation.

But nothing about a separation was okay. It was painfully dragging out the inevitable end, clinging to hope that we could find each other again. Keeping us on hold and preventing the seeking out of other people’s embraces.

_‘Please don’t leave me_ ,’ I said, and ‘ _it’s not worth the fight’_ was his response.

_‘You’re not worth the fight’_ is what I heard.

“I’m not trying to fight with you. I just want—“ I choked on the sadness and wine drowning my heart. I forced the words out and hoped he would fight me on them. “I want to make sure that it’s all you have to say about it. That’s all.”

Anything to make him stay.

_Please, stay_. _Please, stay_. _Please, stay_.

If he could read my mind, he gave me no sign that he cared about the way I was crying out for him. He didn’t do anything until I couldn’t look at him anymore.

He touched me. Gentle and tender and careful, his hand came up to rest against my face that was hot from the wine. It felt so cold and alien and strangely familiar at the same time.

“(Y/n)…” he whispered, his thumb crossing my cheek and wiping away a tear I hadn't realized I’d shed in the first place. But once I did, so many more followed.

I had tried to cry. Apparently, all I had needed was for him to touch me again.

“Is there someone else?” I said between small sobs, resting my face against his palm and hoping to God he wouldn’t take it back yet. Praying that this could be an easy fix, an easy way to hate him. But nothing about this was easy.

“No,” he answered, and I couldn’t find any sign of deception or disgust, no matter how hard I searched. 

“Right. It’s a stupid thought, I’m sorry.” I chuckled, wrapping my arms around myself in an embrace I wished he could give me instead. “You hardly have time for your son, how would you have time for someone else? Not like a girlfriend would be that patient.”

But when I went to turn away from his hand, he stopped me with his other. With both hands on my cheeks, he forced me to look him in matching glassy eyes. “It’s not a matter of convenience or availability,” he rasped; his throat raw from the way the words stung.

“Then what is it?” I cried, searching for the words we both desperately needed to hear; the words we both desperately needed to say.

Spencer’s mouth opened, and then closed. And in that terrible, heartbreaking silence, I wondered if I would ever hear them again. But his hands were still on my face, holding me in front of him and smoothing the tears away. They would still sink into my skin, and I would be left to carry them while he washed his hands of me.

“I’m guessing it’s…” he muttered, trying to give me something without throwing the boxing match of broken hearts, “I’m guessing it’s the same reason you handed me legal separation papers instead of divorce papers.”

I laughed, because it was such a Spencer way of saying ‘ _I still love you.’_ Always a riddle. It gave me enough solace for me to rest my red and weary eyes, trusting that he would protect me while I couldn’t see. “Don’t leave tonight.” I said in that first comfortable quiet, “Please, stay.”

He waited for me to open my eyes and see the look on his face. He wanted me to see the look on his face because he wanted me to feel bad for him when he pathetically stuttered, “I-I… I can’t.”

“Don’t say it.” I begged, but he didn’t listen.

“I have to go back to work, I’m sorry.”

Tearing myself away from his hands, I nearly fell over but refused his help all the same. Teetering against the wall, I rolled away from him and back towards the stairs. “Just go. It was stupid to even ask.”

“You saw what happened. We lost Garcia, then Dave, then Jennifer,” he appealed in a loud whisper. At least he had the decency to have emotions when it came to work. My anger clung to that, and refused to budge even after he tacked on, “We lost you. Someone had to stay.”

“But why did it have to be you?”

And then he said the words I’d grown to hate him for. The words that gnawed at me late at night in an empty bed. The words I heard echoing in the halls of our otherwise silent home. He looked me in my eyes when he said, “They needed me.”

“Spencer, I—!” I shouted, the sound shocking me back into silence in seconds. I took a deep, trembling breath as my entire body shook with the force of my clenched jaw and putrid, poisoned heart. “ _ **I**_ needed you.”

_I still need you. Please, hear me. I still need you._

But Spencer couldn’t read my mind. He was too busy looking up the stairs to see a tiny hand clutching the doorframe that was opened just far enough for two little eyes to peek out at us at the bottom of the stairs. I stared back him, and I saw that we’d done the thing we said we didn’t want to do most of all.

It wasn’t his fault. He wouldn’t understand that. All he saw was his parents, staring back at him covered in tears and angry words. I couldn’t stop it; like a head on collision on a one way street, I wanted to speed up and hope that it would hurt less than if I tried to save myself. 

“Please don’t cry.” Spencer said from behind me, his hand still wet from my tears wrapping around my hand to pull me back to him.

The warmth made me sick.

“Don’t touch me,” I snapped, ripping my hand back before I headed to the stairs. “Go to work. My son needs me. Goodnight, Spencer.”

With those last few bitter words, the door closed and took half my heart with it.

——

The sound of the rundown motel was anything but silent. The buzzing of fluorescent lights and speeding city cars didn’t allow for much else. I wasn’t sure how Spencer managed to stay sane here, considering how he’d called a repairman insisting there was something wrong with the fridge due to a noise no one else could even perceive.

For that reason, I knocked loudly at his door. He knew that I was coming, so it didn’t take him very long to answer.

I could blame the bottle of wine I’d downed for sending the text asking to meet, but I would have done it anyways. We needed neutral ground to talk and there was too much tension at the house for anything to feel fair. The thought of our son associating our home with lovelessness was enough to make the decision to meet Spencer at his bureau-appointed motel. 

I had played out potential scenarios in the shower, trying to find one that wouldn’t end in property damage or more collateral damage to our relationship which was already hanging on by a thread, but hadn’t found one that checked both boxes.

“Come in,” he yelled back, also compensating for the background static. It was the first time he’d raised his voice in a long time. I wondered what he thought about the fact that it was still directed at me.

“Hey,” I muttered as I closed the door behind me, hugging my overcoat tighter. It wasn’t much warmer in his room than it was outside. He always preferred it cold at night, I reminded myself. He said it was easier to sleep, because he could hold me without overheating.

I wondered what kept him warm now.

“Hey,” he answered, turning in his chair to look over my shivering figure. “Are you alright? You look nervous.”

What a stupid question. “Yeah, I am.” I swallowed, biting on my bottom lip and taking a few steps towards him. My eyes swept over the room that seemed almost untouched. Figures, he didn’t spend much time there, either.

“Alright, or nervous?”

I looked at him, the question both catching me off guard and confusing me. My furrowed brows gave me away, because Spencer cleared his throat and sat up. “You didn’t… say which.”

“Both,” I said more succinctly and with a small hint of a smile. It felt wrong to do, but I did it, anyway. Fake it until you make it and all of that. Of course, faking it doesn’t really work with a profiler.

“What’s wrong?” Another stupid question.

“Nothing, it’s just…” I tried to lie again but gave up halfway through. Deciding to be honest, instead, I came closer until I felt his knee rest against my leg. “I feel kind of stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” he assured me, and I hated the way it sparked something in my chest. I could have made it anger again, to tell him that I didn’t need his approval or validation. Or I could let it be love. Let it be him telling me the truth because I needed to hear it.

Licking his lips and swallowing the lump in his throat that he couldn’t clear, he looked down at my hand on the tie holding my coat closed when he asked, “What do you need?”

Slowly and with shaking hands, I pulled the tie loose. I could hear the breath hitch in his throat as I poorly undid the buttons. Inch by inch, my skin was exposed to him through lace. His chest began to move with more purpose, his eyes hungrily taking in the sight. I found the courage to answer him.

“I need you to... touch me,” I whispered, reaching down to hold his hand. That contact was the only thing that successfully tore his gaze away from my body.

“What?”

It was ridiculous just how scary it was to hold my husband’s hand. It felt so heavy but so necessary, like I’d found a part of myself that I only barely recognized. “Please, Spencer,” I cried, lifting our hands up and resting it against my stomach. “Touch me.”

Whether it was the way my whole body was trembling and tensing, or some other disgust with the situation he found himself in, Spencer recoiled so strongly that his absence felt like a punch to the gut.

“What are you doing?” he spat, standing up and pushing the chair back so he wouldn’t have to pass me when he stepped away.

“I-I was just trying to…” I stuttered, pulling the halves of the coat closed around me; my usually confident voice so timid I could hardly use it at all.

“Do you… Do you think that’s the problem with our relationship? That I’m _bored_ with you?” He was talking so loudly that he was practically yelling. It was no wonder he didn’t hear my protests voiced through broken breath.

“I don’t know, I just thought—“

“You think I’m not attracted to you anymore? That after you had our child I wouldn’t want you anymore?”

I had said that I wanted to see Spencer show some emotion. And there he was, with the rage and sadness and shame that I’d thrown at him over the course of the year. He spewed them all out into the tiny, sterile room and never stopped to look back.

“Is that what this is?!” he demanded an answer, and I couldn’t have stopped the two-headed monster of our love from bursting out of our chests even if I wanted to. They tried to find each other; their final stand before only one remained.

“I was just trying to do something, anything to try and save our fucking marriage, Spencer!” I shouted back, feeling uncomfortably exposed in so many ways.

“I don’t just see you as a… sex toy!” he argued in his defense, gesturing to the half-naked state of me before he covered his eyes. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to feel, but I felt embarrassed and ashamed and something else.

“Well what was I supposed to think, Spencer? We haven’t had sex in six months!” I hated that he wouldn’t look at me. Why couldn’t he just look at me? He couldn’t talk to me, couldn’t touch me, couldn’t bear the thought of my existence within the same walls that contained him. “And the last time it only happened because you were drunk!”

Biting down on both his lips, Spencer wiped a hand over his tense jaw like it would bring back the apathy he’d already released. There was no getting it back.

“How am I supposed to have sex with someone that despises me?”

The world came to a screeching halt, the sounds of the city thriving around us burning into my brain and washing out the thumping of my heart trying to find its other half across the room.

“Despise you?” I spoke the words to try and understand them, but it only hurt with none of the clarity I sought. But I was still too scared to say that I loved him, so instead I denied the opposite. “I don’t despise you, Spencer. You’re my husband!”

The ring on my hand felt so heavy, but I never took it off.

“You’ve resented me ever since you left the bureau.” He spit out the words, his hand clenched in an awkward way to point an angry finger at me. “But I didn’t ask you to do that, (y/n). That was your decision.”

Memories flooded back of when we first met. The long rides on the jet, the late nights at the office. The way Spencer caught me in the parking garage because I’d forgotten my umbrella. It wasn’t even raining, but he ran down four flights of stairs, anyway.

The way I thanked him by kissing him, and the way he kissed me back until we didn’t have any breath left.

But then I remembered the day I left— how Spencer promised me we wouldn’t be like Hotch and Haley, or Rossi and any of his failed attempts at marriage. I remembered how Spencer would rush home after a case and hold me the entire day and night, kissing my belly and eventually our baby.

I remembered the first night he decided to stay at work instead of coming home. The first night he let go of my hand and turned over because he needed the rest.

It was too painful to think of the first time he forgot to kiss me goodbye before he was out the door, and there was no umbrella excuse to chase after him. I remembered the way I let him go and told myself that he probably hadn't meant to forget about me.

The first time I thought: _He’s not coming back. I don’t need him, anyway_.

At first, I asked myself: Were we reliving the same memories? What did they look like to him?

But then I stopped, and for the first time I asked: Does it matter?

“Maybe I do hate you a little bit for living the life we used to share. Fine. I admit that.” I stopped for a deep breath to calm my nerves. My next step was steady despite the heels, and Spencer saw the shift he couldn’t account for. “But this was not _only_ my fault. I worked that job, Spencer. I’ve lived that life and I know that there are times when you have to make a decision.”

Standing before him again, my hands held tightly to my sides but my eyes matching his, I bit down on my tongue. I hoped that the pain would lessen the impact of the next few words. The real reason I had resented him, and the reason I refused to apologize.

“And you didn’t pick us.”

For all his brilliance and one hundred and eighty seven IQ points, Spencer had no argument to make. He just looked at me, his eyes roaming over marks from the past and the evidence of how I’d carried his child still visible underneath the lace.

He raised his hand to brush over the touch he’d rejected moments before, but he never made it. Letting it fall aside with his apparent courage, Spencer clenched his teeth and forced out the words, “ _Please_ , I don’t want to fight with you.”

I’d grown so tired of that line— that excuse. The absolute bullshit of a lie. With all the air I had in me, I yelled with a hoarse throat and pure desperation, “I’m not asking you to fight with me, Spencer! I just want you to fight _**for us**_!”

Spencer’s mouth opened to say something, just like it always did as of late. But in place of the usual apathy in his eyes, I saw something else. Behind the tears and sadness, I saw a man I used to know in that silence. And in the blink of an eye, I felt his hands on my face and his breath on my lips milliseconds before they met his.

Holding me in place, Spencer kissed me harder than he ever had before. He kissed me in a way that made my heart leap forward, looking for him in the dim golden light of a shitty motel room. He kissed me like he'd missed me.

And I had missed him. Each second that our lips stayed connected, the harder my heart tried to escape. It beat so harshly against my ribcage, like it was repeating the same morse code message over and over again.

_I remember you._

When I caved in, returning the kiss with everything that was left of me, a weight lifted from my starving lungs and let me breathe again. I took in his frantic breath in exchange for my own, and we shared the mixture of carbon dioxide and love that makes you forget all the reasons to hate each other that you might have otherwise found.

I couldn’t tell which of us started to tear his clothes off first, but I thought it was me. I could feel his buttons slipping between my fingers. I felt the way they didn’t fumble, the muscle memory returning faster than it ever did on a bicycle.

_I remember you_.

With his pants barely coming off in time, we tumbled onto the bed while still in each other’s arms. There wasn’t time to laugh about how clumsy we were, or how horribly uncomfortable the mattress was. There was too much to do, too much lost time we were trying to make up for.

His mouth left my lips but didn’t stray far. He drew kisses across my jaw and over my pulse, where he stopped. Kissing me softer there, he took a moment to draw his tongue over the rapid fluttering of my heart that still yearned for him. I was reminded of the way that we said _until death do us part_ , and how much I had really meant it.

It already felt so overwhelming, so nauseatingly perfect that I thought I would wake up to my empty bed again, reaching for someone and something I’d let slip through my fingers.

Spencer’s fingers, on the other hand, were sliding under the waistband of the matching lace, dragging it unceremoniously down my thighs until they could be kicked off indiscriminately. I imagined what the floor would look like, littered with our clothes and inhibitions as we discarded the worries and fears of not being enough anymore.

The soft sounds of rustling slacks and briefs were the sounds that would signal the end of six months of solitude. With his mouth returning to mine, Spencer’s hand also came back to the space between my thighs. He paused for a minute, drawing strange patterns over the skin as he stalled. But then he did it, anyway, pushing a finger into my waiting heat. I cried out for him; my body overstimulated by the smallest touch from him after being deprived for so long.

_I remember you_ , I thought it louder and hoped that he would hear. Although he seemed hesitant to my touch at first, I eventually found my way down to his erection and gently gripped. And as he moaned into my ear, I felt something come to life within me for the first time in years.

Moving his hand out of the way, I promptly led him to my opening. Again, Spencer stopped. This time he stopped to look me in my eyes, ceasing all kissing and slowing the momentum to a halt.

He looked at me, his eyes burning with tears and a desire to let go of built up nonsense and dive into the oceans of togetherness again. I nodded, just enough for him to see, but not enough to question whether it was the right thing to do.

My husband entered me with such precious precision that I couldn’t help but moan, although he couldn’t recognize it as his name when I spoke it under my breath.

_I missed you_. We both spoke the words with our bodies that started to blend together again. With my nails digging into his back, Spencer’s mouth returned to showering me with insistent kisses. His hips moved slowly, taking his time to let my body accommodate what used to feel like an extension of itself.

He sighed against my lips when he was fully inside of me. One hand came to hold my hip while the other settled under my head, Spencer’s breath hitched before he kissed me again. I felt his hesitation. It was always the last few bricks of the wall built between us that were the hardest to kick away.

But I refused to leave them. If I had to step over them, I would. I would find a way to remind him that we'd been on the same side all along, and that he didn’t have to be alone anymore. So I kissed him that time, bringing his tongue into my mouth and feeling his moans echo through mine.

There was no lasting like this, with Spencer’s hips starting to drive into me with increasing force. Our voices became louder and our movements more purposeful. I began bucking in tandem with his thrusts until my body began to shake from the overwhelming pleasure.

And he held me, tenderly and carefully and with the greatest level of concern. Spencer felt the way that my walls fluttered around him, and he continued with his strained motions. My eyes were barely open, but stubbornly remaining half lidded just so I could see the look on his face. So consumed with the passion and love that gathered in the little space between us.

There was no escaping it, and neither of us wanted to, anyway. Just as I was about to come crashing back to reality, there was one more broken cry from him; a gentle sob as he finally crashed his hips into mine, holding it there as he filled me with his warmth.

Our lips met as the tension slowly eased from our bodies, our weary muscles shaking as we struggled to stay connected. To stay in that moment and never let it go.

But like all good things, it had to end. We would have to free each other from our arms and hope that it wouldn’t be for good. I wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be the last time. Because if this happened again, I wasn’t sure we’d ever come back together again.

It really, truly felt like the stars had aligned and some God gave us mercy to find our way back into each other’s arms. But the longer I stared up at my husband through tears, I realized that we were the only ones responsible. For all of it.

“I love you,” I said before I could think to stop myself.

“I love you,” he returned without restraint, “I’m so sorry.”

Lone tears turned to fountains, and this time when we smeared them into our skin, both of our hands were dirty. We were carrying the weight of each other, and neither of us held it alone anymore.

“I’m sorry, too,” I keened, turning my face to kiss his palm. But then even that wasn’t enough, my shaky hands coming up to hold onto his. “I’m so sorry, Spencer. I love you so much. I don’t want you to leave me.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured me with a panicked and pained voice. “I’m not leaving you.” He repeated, pressing his forehead against mine before stealing another powerful yet languid kiss. When he tried to end it, I held onto his lip for as long as I could, letting it slip from my teeth with a smile.

And he laughed. He laughed and it reminded me of how long it had been since I last heard it like that. There was no bitterness; no challenge or resentment. It sounded like the old walls of our home and covered me like the sheets we’d get lost in for hours.

“It’s so hard when half of your heart is never with you,” I thought aloud, daring to ruin the laughter and replacing it with a pain that had to be handled eventually.

“I know,” Spencer said with a shaky breath. He opened his mouth to say something, and I waited for him to close it again, to keep his secrets buried like that last brick he held in place between us. But then, he spoke. “You were right about this job. There are times where you have to make a decision a-and…”

As his tears dripped from his chin to my chest, I felt the full weight of Spencer’s breakdown. He let himself collapse over my heart, listening to the soft rhythm and letting it guide him back to me.

“I don’t want to do it anymore,” he whispered, “I pick you. I should have always picked you.”

They were the words I thought I wanted to hear. I’d been begging him to say them for so long, but it hardly felt like a win. How could it, when he was so obviously miserable? The love of the job was something we'd shared before. The thought of being the reason he left something he loved made me no better than the cases that kept him away from me.

Sobbing like a child with his hands clutching me like I was the only thing that would stop the pain, Spencer still spoke through the labored breaths, “I was just so scared. I thought I had already lost you and I didn’t know what to do.”

It was like looking in a mirror. He voiced his fears and I recognized them as my own.

“I thought you didn’t love me anymore,” Spencer sobbed, and both of our bodies shook. I held him tighter, but just for a second before I pulled him back to look me in my eyes. I looked into the galaxies they contained and wondered how he ever thought such a thing was possible.

“Spencer, I promised you that I would love you until the day I die.”

His eyes were bloodshot but happy, and in the reflection, I saw the past and I saw the future. I saw the memories playing in the back of his eyes and knew that he wasn’t seeing me as I was in that moment. He saw beyond the present, mixing all the memories together to create something new.

But he remembered those words from that day. 

“Until death do us part, and maybe a little bit longer than that,” he whispered.

“Until the cosmos swallows reality as we know it.” I answered, tapping our noses together and sharing the very same smile from the first time we promised our souls to one another.

“I will still find a way to love you.”


End file.
